


or forever hold your peace

by Spark_Writer



Category: The Penderwicks Series - Jeanne Birdsall
Genre: F/M, Family, Love Confessions, Pining, Romance, THEY NEED TO TELL EACH OTHER HOW THEY FEEL, Unrequited Love, Weddings, batty swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 10:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spark_Writer/pseuds/Spark_Writer
Summary: It was Skye's wedding day, and Jeffery wasn’t marrying her. He woke up heavy and dull, his body in greyscale.Today he was going to eat hors d’oeuvres sitting at a table reserved for wedding guests. He was going to watch people make toasts to the newlywed couple. And he was not going to be one of them. He had learned the hardest way possible to keep his mouth shut tight.A rewrite of the ending of The Penderwicks At Last.





	or forever hold your peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janependerwick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janependerwick/gifts).



 

 

“So Batty is Jeffery’s destiny?”

“Yes.” 

Heart pounding, Batty stepped away from the door.

She was not, in fact, anyone’s destiny but her own. So the mere thought that she might be the destiny of Jeffery Tifton, a boy--no, man--seven years older than her, whom she had always regarded as a dear, brotherly figure, shocked her. Was everyone also going to ignore the fact that she had her eye on the red-headed barista in town, or the fact that she longed to date someone from California who could walk in the surf with her while reciting Stephen King dialogue in hilarious voices? Or that Jeffery was still excruciatingly in love with Skye? How had these facts escaped them? For to Batty, they were as obvious as the color of grass, and as unavoidable as the sharp, green blades.

She moved backward, silently. Away from Jane and Lydia, who didn’t know any of what they were talking about. _I am nobody’s destiny,_ she thought, suddenly conscious of her entire being, her curls and wrists and stomach and mouth and aching head. _I need to find Skye._

 

…

  


Skye was in one of the guest bedrooms at Arundel cottage, folding and unfolding clothes in a way that particularly pertains to being married within the following 24 hours. Her thoughts jumped from action to inaction, flitting about with the dying sunlight. Memories joined her spurts; first smoke enveloping the cottage as she struggled to turn the oven off many years before, to a freckled, green-eyed figure standing amid all the chaos as though he was born to calm her down, cognizant of her flaws but merciful toward them in spite of everything.

“Byli jsme si souzeni,” said Dusek suddenly. _You and I belong together._ Skye hadn’t noticed him appear behind her, leaning in the doorframe and smiling at her like a sentimental Gumby doll. She felt a stab of guilt that she could not articulate.

“Hey,” she said. It came out crooked, slung on a nervous exhale.

Dusek moved closer, extending one of his arms as if to hug her. She stepped out of reach under the guise of hanging her raincoat on a hook embedded in the drywall.

“Everything okay?” Dusek watched her and for a second his eyes looked like double Jupiter’s, warm and large and somehow forlorn. _Stop projecting,_ she told herself. _He feels fine, you’re the weirdo._

“Everything’s--everything’s just dandy. Here.” She tossed him a sun-bleached frisbee. “Why don’t you go keep Lydia and Ben busy? I can hear them running all over the place and it’s making me dissociate.” Another one of her terms from the abnormal psychology course she took just to give herself a better shot at academic tenure.

Dusek grabbed the frisbee, nodding. “Okay, my love.” Skye wished he wouldn’t. Call her that.

Just as she was about to reply with something sentimental and just a little too performative, Batty swung into the room with the aura of someone who has just robbed a bank and immediately regrets their own existence.

“Skye,” said Batty, as though it were some kind of complete, syntaxical thought. She was fidgety and red in the face, just as she was when she let those rabbits out of their hutches some 50,000 years ago.

“Batty,” Skye replied. “What’s up?”

“Stuff.”

Dusek frowned at the pair of them. “Is that, uh, sister code for The Weird Czech Fiancee Should Leave So We Can Talk About Menstrual Cramps?”

“Ew, no,” said Skye. “If we wanted to talk about bleeding from our vaginas monthly, we would do so quite comfortably. Wouldn’t we, Batty?”

Batty snorted. “We would.”

“Ah, alright.” Dusek backed away, first into the door jam, then into the hall. “I’ll just, uh--bye.” He disappeared around the corner.

“You,” said Batty, closing the door in a gentle manner that conflicted deeply with the ire in her tone, “are an absolute fucking moron.” She did not sit on the bed or the armchair in the corner, but stayed standing, arms folded, glaring at Skye as if she had voluntarily stabbed their father.

“I’m--”

“Don’t speak, you’ve spoken for 26 fucking years, Skye, and I’m sick of it.”

“Would you stop cursing? It doesn’t suit you.”

“It suits me perfectly.” Batty did sit then, landing on the bed with an outraged thump. “Skye, why did you tell Jeffery no? Back when he asked you to, you know, not be just friends.”

Skye clutched the inside of her sleeve. Heat rushed up her neck and she mistook it for anger. “I didn’t want to lose his friendship. You know I didn’t like him like that.”

“Bullshit.” Batty was grim.

“Not bullshit. I, I was leaving for California. I didn’t want to start something that would have had to be long distance. I was trying to be pragmatic. Not than anyone gave me any respect or kudos for it, just _you broke his heart_ and _he was going to be part of the family, I really thought he was_ and _you’re heartless_ and _you’ve always loved each other._ Well you know what, Batty? What about how _I_ feel? What about my aspirations, my desires? My real feelings? What about them?”

“What does Dusek have to do with your aspirations or feelings?”

Skye tossed a sweater onto the floor. “So what if I am marrying a Czech man that isn’t Jeffery Tifton tomorrow? I want you all to leave me alone. Jeffery has had a monopoly on this family since he met us and it’s time for that to end. I am me and he doesn’t really love that in its full, ugly reality and even if he did, it’s too late. And even if he did,” she repeated, “I don’t love him.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I mean it.” Skye looked Batty over. “One day you’ll understand what it’s like to--”

“Don’t you dare patronize me,” Batty hissed, not a white flag in sight. “You’re not the one who had to hear Jane tell Lydia that I’m Jeffery’s destiny less than an hour ago.” 

That stopped Skye in her tracks. The room wobbled a little, as if wracked by a small nuclear blast. “That you’re… what?”

“That I, Batty Penderwick, am his destiny. That he was always going to be married to one of us, and apparently its me. Since you and Jane don’t want him.” Batty was not flushed anymore. She was pale and earnest and worried.

“You’re seven literal years younger than him,” Skye blurted. “How would that--how would that ever--”

“Well I don’t love him,” said Batty. “I don’t love him and I haven’t loved him and I’m not lying about any of that. He’s like my older brother and that’s not going to change. It doesn’t matter that we both love music or that you’re marrying Dusek or that Jane’s heart has been broken too many times. None of it matters because I know myself and I know that not only do I not love him but that he loves you. I know he does. 

“And how would you know that?” Skye was inexplicably enraged. “He’s certainly dated enough girls to fill Ohio.”

“Because we talk.”

“You _talk_.” Skye rolled her eyes. “What can you possibly talk about with Jeffery other than Chopin? Your good manners and friendly personal affect?”

“We talk all the time, Skye. You think you know everything and you don’t. When you stopped being his friend I--”

“I never stopped being his friend, I just didn’t want to hurt him by talking to him anymore.”

Batty stood, her curls falling around her in a way that was so Rosy that Skye had to blink to make sure her younger sister hadn’t morphed into her oldest. “When you stopped talking to him it broke his heart. I watched it happen. He used to play happy stuff all the time on piano you know? Claude Debussy and Imagine Dragons and Stevie Nicks. And suddenly it was all _Mad World_ and that weird creepy theme song to that weird creepy old show I can’t remember the name of. The one with the airplane gremlins that you loved when you were 13.”

“ _The Twilight Zone_?”

“Probably. Anyway, that boy loved you. He came to visit us after you left for California, when I had just turned 12.”

“And?”

“And I found him out on the porch after dinner on the first night, picking corn out of his teeth like an advertisement for subpar floss. And I asked him why in the world he was out there all by himself and he just started crying. Just not crying for show, for attention. Really crying.”

Skye’s mouth balled up like used aluminum foil.

“So I asked him why.”

“I don’t care why.”

“Skye, you--”

“I know, I know. I’m cold and uncaring and I don’t listen. I burn cottages down and do too much math and don’t nurture my relationships enough. I get it. I’ve heard it, I know. But I am getting married in the morning and that’s that. Not to Jeffery, to Dusek. That’s my final word on the matter.”

And then Batty pulled out the last card in  her deck, one that was nearly too painful for Skye to bear. “I really thought you were more like our mom.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Skye moved toward the wastebasket, wishing she would vomit so the whole ordeal could be over.

“It means she would do anything for the person she loved. And she wouldn’t waste time or mince words or be stupid about it. She would know herself enough to know who she was in love with. She almost married a drummer from Pakistan but she married Daddy instead. We wouldn’t be here without that.”

“I’m marrying Dusek.” Skye felt herself grow cold, felt her hackles rise. “I love him and I am marrying him. Full stop.”

Batty opened her mouth and before Skye turned away she saw tears in Batty’s eyes.

Skye gathered her empty suitcase in her arms, pushing her hair from her face. “You won’t change my mind.”

 

…

  


On the night Jeffery visited--odd, because Skye had long since left for California--Martin Penderwick woke up in the night missing his first wife. It was not a habit he liked or purposely tried to indulge in at this point, but it still happened. Even Iantha knew.

When he wandered downstairs to get a glass of water and soothe his aching heart he ran smack dab into Jeffery in a similar, watery state.

“Y’okay?” Martin asked.

Jeffery breathed in and breathed out. He was 19 and the world was hard for him. Martin knew that but he just didn’t know why. “Do I look okay?”

“You look sad.”

“I am.” Jeffery put his water glass down on the counter and suddenly his face collapsed. Martin lunged toward him, as if to catch Jeffery’s body in a fall that would never occur. “Before you ask if this is about her, yes it is about her. I love her. I love her so much I want an airplane to fall on top of me. 

Martin, caught between chiding Jeffery for making _Donnie Darko_ references at this time of night and sympathy, chose the latter. “Love is nothing to cry over,” he said, finding a blanket in the darkness of the living room and tossing it to Jeffery, “and everything to laugh over.”

As if he hadn’t just been crying with love 4 minutes earlier, with his big throbbing hypocritical opera-listening Elizabeth-longing heart.

“I’m not crying because I love Skye. That’s the easiest thing in the world for me, easier than Beethoven in the dark. I’m crying because she doesn’t love me. Because she’s in California and she doesn't love me.”

“But my dear boy,” said Martin, “she entirely _does_.”

 

…

  


“Martin,” said Elizabeth on their wedding night, “Do you ever think about our children’s weddings?”

“We don’t have children,” said Martin, young and stupid and dizzy with love.

“But we will.”

“I’m not,” said Martin, lifting Elizabeth’s chin with his thumb, “getting anyone pregnant tonight.”

Elizabeth laughed and laughed and Martin fell more in love with her and the trueness of it, the intensity of it made him want to give Elizabeth his bones and heart so that she could live forever. He did not know, yet, how that notion would make him sob later on, holding his daughters at his wife’s funeral, begging the universe to dissolve him.

“I just hope,” said Elizabeth, between kisses, “that they marry someone they love. Really love. Fully love. Like I love you.”

“We’ll make sure of it,” Martin muttered, moving down her neck. “Now no more talk about kids.”

Elizabeth pulled him toward her and they moved together, ignorant of the future and full of joy, their unborn daughters calling to them in a language uninvented.

 

…

 

_Dear Jeffery,_

_How are you? Hope all is well. It rained a couple of days ago and_

  


_Dear Jeffery,_

_California sucks balls. To be honest it makes me feel like a weird hermit who hates sunlight and the ocean. Maybe sometime you’ll come out here and I’ll talk you to the one coffee place that doesn’t suck. That would be_

  


_Dear Jeffery,_

_I’m sorry about this dumb stationary that Rosy bought me 5 years ago. I’m broke and I’m trying to use it up before it gets_

  


_Dear Jeffery,_

_I am sorry about what happened. Before I left. I didn’t want to lose you and I feel like I messed everything up_

  


_Dear Jeffery,_

_California is hot--big surprise. I don’t know anyone yet so I’m getting a lot of work done, which is good. Maybe sometime you’ll come visit and I’ll take you to my favorite coffee house. They have this macchiato that’ll put hair on your chest; there’s probably 7 shots of espresso in it. I didn’t know I was a coffee person until I moved here. Anyway, I hope you’re well. It’s boring here without my family, sometimes. And you. Boring without you._

_Skye_

 

…

 

It was Skye and Rosy’s wedding day, and Jeffery wasn’t marrying either one of them. He woke up heavy and dull, his body in greyscale.

Today he was going to eat hors d’oeuvres sitting at a table reserved for wedding guests. He was going to watch people make toasts to the two newlywed couples. And he was not going to be one of them. He had learned the hardest way possible to keep his mouth shut tight.

 

…

 

Skye looked like an open flame. Fire on white, her entire body radiant against her wedding dress. She looked like a dream. Like a way in and a way out.

Like Elizabeth.

Martin beamed so hard he had no room for bitterness. The dark would not find its way in today.

 

…

 

Rosalind was so in love with Tommy she could hardly stand it. They had planned a secret rendezvous that morning, social mores about not seeing each other on one’s wedding day before the wedding, aside.

Later, as she sat patiently while Jane artfully applied makeup to her bare face, she watched Skye receive a text from Dusek.

Skye didn’t open it.

Rosalind, for the first time, and completely too late, understood.

 

…

 

Jeffery almost lost two ribs from the force of Rosalind’s impact. She was suddenly all around him, everywhere, pulling him out of bed and tousling his hair and apologizing, apologizing, why was she apologizing?

“She isn’t in love with Dusek, Jeffery.”

“Wha--how do you--how do you know?”

“Because I can’t stand a second away from Tommy right now and Skye won’t even open a simple text from her fiance. The whole thing felt rushed and artificial to me from the start but I didn’t want to rain on her marital parade. I figured it out too late. I should have done something, anything, but I didn’t know.”

“That,” said Jeffery, “makes me feel exponentially worse. I wish you hadn’t told me. 

Rosalind touched his arm, gently. “It’s not supposed to make you feel worse. It’s supposed to make you go get her.”

Jeffery gaped at Rosy. “She’s getting _married,_ Rosalind. She’s happy, I’ve seen it. I know when Skye Penderwick is happy.”

Rosalind shook her head. “Then you don’t know her at all because she’s been miserable ever since she turned you down when you were 19. In like, an empowered highly feminist way, but still.” She laughed.  “Absolutely miserable.”

Jeffery grabbed his freshly dry-cleaned suit jacket and put it on over his pajamas. “What can I do, Rosy?” He was desperate. “It’s too late. I’m always too late.”

“I think,” said Rosalind, “I have an idea.”

 

…

  


“Jeffery,” said Batty, coming up behind him in rows of wedding seats at Arundel and squeezing him tight. “I adore you.” She too, sounded apologetic. Why was everyone sorry for him?

He turned around and said, “I am about to do something very stupid and I am asking you not to stop me.”

 

…

 

“If anyone can show just cause why this couple cannot lawfully be joined together in matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace,” said Cagney, who of course had become ordained online one lonely Tuesday night. All eyes were upon Skye and Dusek.

Ms. Tifton wasn’t sure why Jane and Lydia swiveled to look at her smugly, but she clutched her purse a little tighter, unnerved.

She was burdened with the misfortune of sitting closest to the altar, so it was she who screamed first when a grubby soccer ball appeared out of nowhere and knocked Skye Penderwick flat on her back.

 

…

 

A note to the reader:

Soccer balls don’t have feelings or thoughts, but if this one did it would be quite exasperated at the gust of unexpected wind that made it swerve from its intended path. It would find itself scooped into the arms of a panicked, freckled man who looked so incredibly like one from years before, same mouth, the same watchful eyes, same air of apology, kneeling over a woman in a white dress, telling her he’s sorry and he loves her he loves her he loves her he _loves_ her

 

…

 

Dusek, thrown up against a wall in the melee of guests, realized he was exhibiting classic symptoms of shock. His hands were shaking, his legs felt perilous, and his heart might stop at any moment. He watched, as though outside his own body, as Skye’s old friend Jeffery leaned over her, touching her hair and wrists and cheeks and nose. Jeffery appeared to be crying. Not just crying, but weeping. Big, messy, desperate sobs.

Any minute now, Skye was going to wake up to a man that wasn’t her fiance, was going to wake up to Jeffery.

And Jeffery, as if hearing his own name in Dusek’s brain, looked up at Dusek and asked, begged, with his eyes.

And Dusek, with a rapidly closing throat, nodded yes.

 

…

 

“So Dusek was supposed to get hit in the head with a soccer ball so you could tell me you love me?” asked Skye, pressing a bag of frozen Vegetable Medley to her skull.

“It was Rosy’s full idea!” Jeffery was guilty, picking at his lapel with a red face.

Rosalind placed her hand on Skye’s shoulder. “It absolutely was my idea and it was a stupid one. It never goes well when I think up something reckless, does it.”

“I’d say it worked pretty well when you proposed to me.” Tommy wrapped his arms around Rosalind and she rolled her eyes.

“It was supposed to be a tiny diversion. Just ridiculous enough to give Jeffery time to say how he feels.”

Jeffery took both Skye’s hands in his own, blushing when she did not remove them from his grasp.

“Well it was certainly ridiculous,” said Skye, without a hint of teasing in her voice. She was staring intently at the side of Jeffery’s red face.

Rosalind glanced at her family members and nodded toward the door. “We’re going to give you two a chance to talk things over,” she said, ushering her father and Ben out the door. Iantha was already out in the yard, saying kind things to Dusek and making him eat wedding fruit salad to keep his strength up, as if there were a famine.

 

…

  


The instant they were alone, Jeffery turned toward Skye.

“Skye, I--”

But she was kissing him, long and hard and earnestly and the way she had wanted to since she was eleven years old, fanning Jeffery Tifton back to life with her camouflage hat, birds spinning around her head even though he was the one who’d gotten knocked out.

 

               …

 

“Sometimes soccer balls knock brides out at their own wedding and sometimes brides don’t get married in the first place,” said Martin, to his best remaining photograph of Elizabeth Penderwick. “And sometimes, botanists who enjoy Latin marry violently beautiful, horrendously intelligent women who are are better than they could ever hope to be. But it’s all okay, as long as real, full love is involved. The way you loved me.”

In the next room, Jeffery and Skye were arguing over wallpaper samples, the conversation broken by inexorable kissing.

Martin smiled and turned off Giuseppe Verdi’s _Rigoletto._ He left the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My dears,
> 
> I sat down and wrote this in one sitting, so any and all errors are mine. I loved the last installment in the series, but in many ways it also felt flat and did not do justice to Skye and Jeffery and their (what I will always believe in) feelings for each other. This is just my take on what could/should have happened instead.
> 
> To all of you who continue read and write Penderwick fic, thank you for keeping these people alive. It is completely inspiring. 
> 
> Thank you for reading and as ever, please PLEASE leave your thoughts/comments/feelings below <3


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